Make Your Own Luck

I was at the train station on Friday, waiting for my train to New York City, and I had about an hour before the train showed up. Instead of sitting around reading the paper or something, I walked all around the train station, looking for people I might recognize.

Whenever I’m in a room and someone walks in, I have to look up. Even if it’s a very crowded lecture hall with tons of people pouring in. I ran into three friends (two of whom I haven’t seen in about four years) this way at a lecture I attended over the weekend in New York.

I do a lot of networking on my bike. I’ll be riding around town and if I see somebody I know, I’ll yell hi to them, sometimes stop my bike and have a chat. I see people I know like this all the time, because I look for them.

I was walking around town and I swore I saw the little sister of an old high school acquaintance. I looked up the acquaintance in Facebook, asked her if her sister had moved to the area, and lo and behold she had! Turns out we work almost next door to each other and we got lunch the next week.

Everywhere I am, no matter how unlikely it is that I’ll bump into somebody I know, I’m looking for them anyway. This is how I “happen” to network with people. I seek it out, all the time.

This is what I mean when I say you make your own luck, and it ties into Chris Matthews’ principle that “It’s not who you know, it’s who you get to know.”